Month: July 2016

Simplicity is the key these days, companies worldwide are reducing the detail out of their respective logos by removing gradients and shaving off outlines in response to a now trending “flat” aesthetic.Take Microsoft and their products for example. Bing, xbox, office, and windows have all had a recent revamp and have adopted the flat trend.The handmade look has also been gaining traction in recent years. These are logos that have been designed to suggest the notion of being non-digital in origin in an effort to convey to the consumer that they provide a personal and intimate service or experience.

The use of negative space is a go to for logo designers because it challenges the viewer to engage in a visual “egg hunt” to look for a deeper meaning within the logo. Once the Easter egg is found, the consumer receives a sense of reward and will unconsciously associate the brand with those positive feelings.

Last week I was introduced to the website design software, Adobe Muse. I plan on using this software to create an online portfolio where potential clients can see the best of my visual art and design work.

Today I have been trying to execute some basic functions such as getting my header and footer to be static while the rest of the page scrolls behind them, and making a slideshow span the entire width of the browser window. I was quite pleased by the end of the day to achieve both of these functions.

static menu

full-screen slideshow

Over the next week I will continue to develop my skills in Muse and by Sunday I hope to have a fully functioning and aesthetically pleasing website to showcase my skills to the world.

To get a scope on the current trends for web design, I did some research into successful portfolios. The first site I landed on was David Trubridges website http://www.davidtrubridge.com

I was most impressed by the simple elegance and design of the landing page, a full colour, full screen image with modest branding welcomed me to his site. The quality of the photography is what really had me engaged in the site and added to the overall professional looking aesthetic. The neat scroll effects played a complimentary roll in ensuring a seamless and pleasant experience.

The next site I visited was a website for a studio specializing in app development, known as Rally Interactive.

Navigating through beta.rallyinteractive.com was eye opening and for me it really set the benchmark for what a website is capable of in terms of function and aesthetic. The interactive elements were top shelf, and the unique ribbon animation had my attention as soon as I landed on the page, I was actually scrolling through all the menu items because it very entertaining. Overall a wonderful site but the animations were definitely the icing on the cake.

One of the more memorable websites I encountered in my research would be ultranoir.com, a design studio based in France. Compositionally it was very well designed, which allowed for a fullscreen interactive slideshow of all their main projects right on their landing page, the perfect tool to showcase their best work. The simple sans serif font contrasted well against the photographs but didn’t clash with them, which was also evident within their branding.

I will definitely be using elements from these websites in my own project